How to ensure you track performance against target
KPIs, we all have them, sometimes we set them for ourselves, often they are set for us! The question is, are the KPIs you are reviewing supporting your efforts into making the boat go faster? Are they translated from business goals or just a bunch of metrics someone thought they may as well stick on a weekly powerpoint dashboard because Google Analytics spits out a sexy graph?
This post explores how you can ensure you are using the KPIs that are helping you track performance in line with your business goals? KPIs give an integral pulse on the business that helps keep you be aware of what's really going on and they allow you to exert control to pull the right levers to keep on track according to what actually matters. For me, the key when setting KPIs for marketing and digital marketing is to start with the business goals.
[si_guide_block id="5676" title="Download FREE…
It's true: email deliverability best practice is not the most exciting topic, but it's a necessary evil
Ignore it and, by the time you've run into problems, it will take a very long time to fix. Pay attention to it and you'll have a better chance of landing in the inbox. Not a guarantee, just a better chance.
One important thing to differentiate between is blocking and blacklisting, terms which are often used interchangeably although they have different levels of gravity. While no marketer wants their emails to be prevented from landing in the inbox, blocking is not worth panicking about as much as blacklisting.
What happens when your emails are blocked?
Blocking is something that happens at ISP level so your emails could be blocked in Outlook, but not Gmail, for example. All ISPs have different rules that determine which campaigns…
A Customer satisfaction survey (CSAT) allows you to measure customer experience, how much a customer would recommend your business and satisfaction with your brand
There are some simple rules to follow when creating a customer satisfaction survey which gives you high-quality insights, accurate data and actionable findings, whether it's the metrics you include or question types which can enhance the feedback.
In our Quick Win on how to create an effective customer satisfaction survey, we go into more detail about metrics and question types, how to analyse and interpret results and even how to project manage the process.
In this blog post, we'll explore some effective question types which can help you pull together a useful CSAT.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
You might be familiar with NPS as it’s grown massively in popularity amongst marketers globally. It’s a low effort and generally excellent indicator of how a business is doing. It’s especially worth adding…
Converting leads into paying customers is the undying challenge for marketing teams and e-commerce companies year after year
Every business wants to grow their revenue and reach, yet many still struggle to understand what the numbers actually mean and how to use them to boost sales.
Thanks to advances in big data and analytical technology, marketers now have access to more consumer data than ever before. However, this only serves to overwhelm over 50% of marketers, in turn making their marketing strategies ineffective.
[si_guide_block id="5676" title="Download FREE Resource – Digital marketing plan template" description="Our popular marketing planning template built on the Smart Insights RACE planning system."/]
Since there is access to so much information within a business’s sales and customer data, marketing teams tend to feel overwhelmed and unsure of the best ways to apply it. While nearly every dataset has its…
The elearning industry shows how to make niche marketing work
The internet is crowded with brands searching for the best way to grab consumers' attention — unfortunately, the roadmap to success is always in flux for digital marketers. With Google's constant algorithm tweaks, for example, tactics that drove traffic yesterday won’t always work tomorrow.
Given how quickly best practices evolve, it's easy for marketers to get lost in the crowd, especially when working with a new industry that has no set of "rules" to follow and no clearly defined marketplace. A few months ago, I met with the head of marketing at a company that makes learning management systems, also known as eLearning software. He mentioned that the company's site traffic had been lower than expected and he was having a hard time generating leads.
After talking a bit more, I found out that…
Your marketing's most valuable player: using attribution.
Imagine a typical customer journey for a business like TOMS, a shoe retailer that sells online. A user sees a sponsored Facebook post that was liked by a friend about TOMS, and clicks through to Tom's site, browses for a while, then leaves.
Later on, the user sees a display ad from a TOMS retargeting campaign, and clicks through again, this time signing up for email alerts from the brand, but still not buying anything. Finally, the user receives an email from TOMS, clicks through, and starts to really think about buying the shoes. They leave it for a bit, and decide to buy, and they type the web address directly in the browser.
Who gets the credit for any revenue created? Well, that will depend on your attribution model. Attribution may sound complicated but in simple terms,…
With more businesses using Facebook Messenger for marketing, brands are also starting to take advantage of Messenger for surveys and research too
I'm always on the lookout for new ways of conducting research with users and customers and one study which caught my eye was how Liberal Democrats are using Facebook Messenger to run a survey. Liberal Democrats are a political party in the UK, we don't support any particular political party, this just personally caught my attention. They paid for sponsored ads, creating a specific "Lib Dems Listen" messenger account and then ran an automated survey.
There are great advantages to conducting surveys in this way, firstly like any survey, it's automated but it's also much more conversational and it helps to engage with users who may be tired of taking traditional surveys, thus response rate technically should be higher. Customers always…
As your business engages in both traditional and digital marketing practices for different outcomes you will see cross-overs and similarities in the way you work
There are overarching “rules”, “guidelines” and marketing best practice you can follow but when you delve into more niche sectors, you will need to learn new and valuable approaches, giving you scope to alter your marketing processes across the board.
When you’re focused in a particular niche a whole new set of opportunities and marketing skillsets open up to you. The value of finding your specific niche and optimizing for that specific target audience is particularly important for search engine optimization and homing in on those very targeted buyers looking for businesses like yours.
Benefits of Niche Marketing
Niche marketing is an effective way of tapping into a ready-to-engage audience who are specifically looking for your product, service and/or…
Understanding some of the basics of the psychology of persuasion and how to apply them, can make a huge difference to your marketing efforts
We’ve previously spoken about how psychological principles can help shape and optimize brand communications — not least, referral marketing campaigns.
In truth, there’s a whole universe of theories and heuristics belonging to a wider field of behavioral economics.
Behavioral economics basically describes the effects of psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors on human economic decision making.
This obviously includes the dynamics of deciding to buy. And for this reason, having a good grasp of some key ‘cognitive triggers’, rooted in behavioral economics theory, is a good idea for any ecommerce marketer.
Let’s take a closer look at 3 of the most well-known ‘cognitive triggers’, and how they can be applied to your marketing efforts…
Anchoring and the decoy…
Email marketing may not seem as sexy as some marketing channels. But when it comes to results, it leaves the rest in the dust
Research by McKinsey tells us email is 40 times better at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
Once you’ve got customers buying from you, email is your best opportunity to increase their customer lifetime value. Customers who receive your emails spend 138% more, on average, than those who don’t subscribe.
There’s a tonne of clever stuff you can do with email. So much so, you’d never have time to do it all manually. This where email marketing automation comes in.
Automating your email campaigns allows you to get ahead of the competition, automatically. It frees your team from repetitive tasks and enables you to use intelligent personalization without breaking a sweat.
But which automated email campaigns should you start with? Here are ten campaigns you can easily implement…
